[et-mgmt-tools] Re: [libvirt] virt-install and custom distros

[Kay Williams]

Can the issue be addressed in the upcoming virtinst release?

Cole Robinson wrote:
> Kay Williams wrote:
>> We have an application that builds custom distributions based on RHEL, CentOS or 
>> Fedora.  We would like to install these over the network using virt-install, but 
>> we've run into an issue with the distro check logic. Specifically, virt-install 
>> fails unless it finds a string "Red Hat Enterprise Linux", "Fedora"  or "CentOS" 
>> within the family field of the .treeinfo file.
>>
>> Our application currently sets the family field to the user-provided distro name 
>> (see below).  We have avoided using the base distro name given trademark concerns.
>>
>>      [general]
>>      family = <user provided value>
>>      variant = <user provided value>
>>
>> We can get virt-install to pass the distro check by setting the family name to 
>> one of the accepted values, e.g.
>>
>>      [general]
>>      family = Fedora
>>      variant = [user provided distro name]
>>
>> Is this the expected/desired use for the family and variant fields?  Or is there 
>> another approach we should consider?
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Kay
> 
> (cc-ing et-mgmt-tools, since that is the list for virt-install/
>  virt-manager)
> 
> We shouldn't be failing if the family/variant is unknown: it's really
> just a convenience check. We can just assume it's an unknown distro
> and continue on, checking for [images-xen] and so on.. The code may
> need to be reworked a bit to accomodate this.
> 
> Although we don't do it at the moment, I could see us in the future
> using this family/variant value to check our internal db on whether
> to set up virtio and other specific settings. So using custom values
> here may not allow virt-install to choose an optimal config, but we
> should still try and let the install proceed.
> 
> - Cole
> 
>